JACKSON BROWNE – For Everyman – Amazon.com Music

amazon.com – This is an album for `everyman”, the definitive statement by Jackson Browne of his disturbing and apocalyptic view of contemporary society, and his hopes and fears for its future. It is also a lovely, stirring, and evocative song cycle that illuminates Jackson Browne’s unique vocal and instrumental arrangements, and sends one running for the door to buy more of the albums of the early “JB” variety. My personal favorites on this wonderful album are “Our Lady of the Well”, a interesting and fetching suggestion of Browne’s social and political concerns blended with a celebration of the common rural peasantry of Latin America, “Take It Easy” written with Glenn Frye of the Eagles and recorded by both Browne and the Eagles, “These Times You’ve Come” about an old pair of lovers who still see each other romantically after parting, and of course, the combination song cycle of “Sing My Songs” and “For Everyman”, which like “The Deluge” on another album, sets out Browne’s fear of a pending eco-disaster and apocalypse. Browne is still around, still creative, and still as socially and politically outspoken, but this is one of his best early albums, when he was one of the most talented and creative young folk-rock luminaries on the popular scene, a superstar a long time in the making. This is a `must-have’ album for any real fan of Browne’s music and for anyone just interested in top-shelf folk-rock music by one of the seventies and eighties greatest popular artists.